I am a 48 year old woman and everything in this article relates just as accurately to me.
Humans age, not just men, and the issues we face are more the same than they are different. Women have a little more physical stuff to contend with, perhaps, menopause as I am just discovering is no joke, but, otherwise, all the same issues.
I watched that lovely "Grumpy Old Men" series on the ABC a few weeks ago and both my 17 year old daughter and I agreed, we were grumpy old men too.
As I said to someone recently when they asked me what the future held for me, here's to getting shorter, fatter and hairier.

What mid life? What about early life? What about late life? Why do we have to map out life into stages at all? And what's wrong with 45 plus men driving sports cars and riding Harley Davidson motor bikes,growing a ponytail from their bald heads and getting a tattoo or two? I'm in this age group and have absolutely no problems with arriving at this stage of my life. For crying out loud, go on, just ask me and I'll tell you all about it. Me Grumpy? Naarr!
[And I'm not as old as Mick Jagger]

Get out of NSW in your research Peter.

AND here is the research, ha!

Forty becomes the new 30

Scientists have defined a new age concept and believe it could explain why populations are ageing but at the same time seem to be getting younger.

The idea could help explain why in many ways people today act younger than their parents did at the same age.

Instead of measuring ageing by how long people have lived, a pair of scientists has factored in how many more years people can still look forward to.

"Using that measure, the average person can get younger in the sense that he or she can have even more years to live as time goes on," said Warren Sanderson of the University of New York.

He and Sergei Scherbov, of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have used their method to estimate how the proportion of elderly people in Germany, Japan and the United States will change in the future.

The average German was 39.9 years old in 2000 and could plan to live for another 39.2 years, the research reported in the science journal Nature said.

However, by 2050 the average German would be 51.9 years old and could expect another 37.1 years of life.

So middle age in 2050 would come around 52 instead of 40 as in 2000.

"As people have more and more years to live, they have to save more and plan more and they effectively are behaving as if they were younger," Professor Sanderson said.

Five years ago, the average American was 35.3 years old and could plan for 43.5 more years of life.

By 2050, the researchers estimate it would increase to 41.7 years and 45.8 future years.

"A lot of our skills, our education, our savings and the way we deal with our health care depend a great deal on how many years we have to live," he said.

"This dimension of how many years we have to live has been completely ignored in the discussion of ageing so far."

- Reuters

This is just part of the Unisex Conspiracy - the effort to prove that men and women are the same, so because women have a menopause etc then men must also. But this fantasy about metamorphosing stages of life as though we were insects is just unreal and not recognised in most cultures. In practice boys just grow older with no dramatic change in outlook etc. "teen age" is just as arbitary as refering to the age of the 20th Century. History does not come in quantum lumps and neither do men. Keith

Peter West.

Great article Peter. I think Dave comes the closest to the mark in his comment:
To stay healthy a man has to stay fit, maintain an exercise regime. Try to keep the creative side of one’s personality active. And take time out from work every now and then to focus on something different.

I am now 60YO, and do things activily my kids are fearful of doing. But as Ken stated (Your very normal Ken) women will always remain at issue with us blokes. even into old age.